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| Driftwood at Las Lajas |
The Washington Times in March of 2016
reported on a speech President Obama gave to Argentinian students. In
it, he was basically making the point that the hard-line choice
between capitalism or socialism need not be their only options when
visualizing their future politic. He went on to say that under
Castro’s communism, Cuba was able to realize good education and
health care for all Cuba’s citizens, but that the same system
proved unable to develop a decent, working economy.
Similarly—although the capitalist market place economies have
produced huge economic growth—modifications have had to be made in
order to ensure that citizens benefit from these results.
His point was: look for choices that
work in your place and time, and don’t be tied to an ideological
allegiance to either extreme.
There is, of course, a large
anti-Obama cohort in the USA and any number of websites use this
speech and some references to a friend who voted for a communist
candidate in college to allege that Obama is, in fact, a communist.
(See
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/mar/25/obama-on-capitalist-versus-communist-theory-just-c/
and search “Obama is a communist” to access the gist of that
discussion.) One irony is that the American constitution guarantees
freedoms that would certainly allow anyone to legitimately hold to a
political philosophy that is socialist and to campaign in that
direction, so how can being a socialist automatically make one un-American? Similarly, the attempts to prove Obama to be a Muslim
(as a condemnation) defy the same American constitution's guarantees
of freedom of religion.
The notion that America is a
capitalist, Christian place and must defend itself against any threat
by other economic or religious alternatives is a delusion. Although
the economies in North America largely operate on free market
principles, the practice of providing health care at state expense,
supporting child-raising with government subsidies, the provision of
education at taxpayers’ cost, support of the poor through social
welfare programs, all these fall under a “socialistic” rubric.
Not to mention that governments regulate and tax corporations—the
scope of marketplace freedom is not unlimited.
We live under mixed economies in North
America—not capitalist, not socialist, but we have generally come
to do what works for us in our time and place. That was exactly
Obama’s point in his speech to the students. The USA leans more
toward the capitalist extreme than Canada, but neither country can
boast of being a bastion of either extreme position; we will continue
to find the mix that works for us. Sweden leans more toward what’s
sometimes called the ‘granny state’ than either of us. It seems
to work for them.
One lesson history should have taught
us is that attempts to impose either the pure capitalist or the pure
socialist economies have always been disastrous. Both systems, when
left unmodified, produce elites that either through political-party
status or through the accumulation of obscene wealth produce ever-
increasing inequality. Both systems unmodified produce an upper class
and an underclass. Both systems tend to decay as inequality mounts:
citizen participation decreases; cynicism and non-cooperation turns
to active protest, even sabotage; citizens whose allegiances veer
toward either the left or right turn on each other, blame each
other for their perceived problems. In short, community and the
community spirit seeps away until national goodwill is badly damaged or gone.
The Soviet Union breaks down, the
Roman Empire collapses, Tiananmen Square protests are crushed, the
2008 economic crisis in the USA sees taxpayers blackmailed into
rescuing irresponsible bankers, North American politics is polarized
as never before, Greece and Spain verge on economic collapse, Brexit
happens.
Latin America has had more than its
share of right-wing dictators, doctrinaire communist dictators,
bloody uprisings, foreign interference and failed coups. Obama was
advocating that students put down any flag-waving, ideological
biases and work together in negotiating what mix will work in their
country at this time. It’s exactly what’s needed all over
America; it’s the only approach with any real chance of long-term success.
Unless your definition of success is a
full-scale, fight-to-the-death showdown in the OK Corral. That could be fun too.
